Friday, February 7, 2014

Feel free to download and print the Parasha sheet and share it
with your friends and family: Click here: Parashat Tetzaveh

To Light the Menorah,
Constantly

The lighting of the menorah
opens our parasha:

Command the Children of Israel and they shall take to you pure
olive oil, beaten for the light, to cause the lamp to burn tamid, constantly.

(Shemot 27:20)

The placement of these verses
is curious, as the more appropriate place would have been in last week's parasha, together with
the making of the menorah. The verse also stresses not just the lighting of
the menorah, but the donating of the oil for that sake. In this way, it
echoes last week's parasha
that opens with a command to donate various items to the making of the
Tabernacle.

These opening verses may be
addressing a deep challenge in the sacrificial service. For while everyone
donated to the Mishkan, only the kohanim
were able to actually perform the service on a daily basis. This special
role of the kohanim
is, in fact, the emphasis of our parasha.
It is why they require special clothes, it is why they will undergo a
sanctification and initiation ceremony - so that they, and no one else - will
be dedicated to the service in the Temple. What, then, of the people's
involvement?

The answer, the Torah is
saying, is that those opportunities do exist. Don't overlook them or
minimize their importance, we are being told. Even before we start talking
about the kohanim,
here is a way that everyone can participate on an ongoing basis. Donate
the oil for the menorah. The donations in Terumah were a one-time deal,
and anyway, it is usually the rich that make those types of
donations. But going forward, you can donate the oil for the menorah on
any given day. You can also be a part of the daily Temple service.

This idea is reflected in our
Shabbat davening,
where we have a special blessing, a mishebeirach,
for hanosnim ner la'maor,
those that pay the electric bill, that donate to the day-to-day upkeep and
running of the synagogue. It is a blessing for those who are oskim b'tzarchei tzibbur be'emunah,
who volunteer their time to stuff envelopes, to set up the tables for se'udah Shlishit, to
organize the bikkur cholim committees and to do the shemira for those who
have recently died. It is a blessing for those who for those whose quiet work
keeps the lights on, day after day.

Read this way, the giving of
the oil is a way for people otherwise excluded to be able to contribute, a
way that is often undervalued. It is an important message to us to ensure
that everyone can contribute and participate in some way and to make sure
that these opportunities are always available. And to make sure that these
contributions and these people are given the recognition that they truly
deserve.

Hazal, however, took it
further. For although the verses demand that the menorah be lit by
Aharon and his sons, the Gemara tells us that the "lighting of the
menorah is not a priestly service" (Yoma 24b) and Rambam, following this
to its logical conclusion rules that "lighting the menorah can be done
by non-kohanim."
(Laws of Entering the Sanctuary 9:7). So this, unlike the rest of the
service of the Temple, is, at least in theory, more accessible to every
individual.

This, then, would explain why
this service appears before the making of the priestly garments, whereas the
daily sacrifices and the burning of the incense appear afterwards. Those
latter two require kohanim,
kohanim who
are wearing the right garments, who have undergone the sanctification
ceremony. That's a lot of barriers. The lighting of the menorah, in contrast,
can be done by anyone, man or woman, dressed in any way and in whatever
circumstance.

What is signified by the
lighting of the menorah? Light immediately suggests illumination in the
metaphoric sense: knowledge, wisdom and understanding. The Midrash (Shemot
Rabbah 36:3) puts it plainly: light helps you see where you are going. The
lighting of the Menorah, for the midrash, represents the learning of Torah.
Torah illuminates for us how to live our lives, how to avoid stumbling and
sinning, how to serve God as best as we can.

The Midrash goes further. Light
can also symbolize a mitzvah, and as such, "Whoever performs a mitzvah
is as if he has lit a light before God and given life to his soul."
Doing mitzvot in a connected way fills us with meaning, animates us, gives us
religious sustenance.

Torah connects us to God and to
the wisdom of our tradition, gives us direction, makes our life of mitzvot
one of depth and meaning. It can, it must, be accessible to all. The mishna
in Avot tells us that the crown of the priesthood is only for Aharon's descendants,
but the crown of the Torah is sitting and waiting for anyone to take. But is
this really true? The menorah, in theory, could be lit by anyone, but
in practice, only the kohanim
ever did it. The Torah, in theory, can be learned by anyone, but in practice,
many have been excluded. Until very recently, women were the most obvious of
those excluded from serious Torah study, but today, exclusions persist in
more subtle, and sometimes invisible, ways.

Those with learning and
developmental disabilities are excluded from the vast majority of Jewish
schools and synagogues. Sometimes they are actively rejected, told that they
do not "fit in" or will impact the image of the school in a
negative way. Other times, the rejection is more by omission than commission.
There are not sufficient structures and professionally trained staff to make
the school or the shul a feasible option.

Left to their own devices,
parents try to homeschool these children in Torah, but what resources are
available to them? For many people, the texts of Torah learning are
themselves the biggest obstacles. They are dense, difficult, often
unpunctuated, and written in a foreign language. Where are the Torah graphic
novels? Where are the books of halakha, mishna and Gemara that communicate
the depth of our tradition with illustrations and stories, that can be
absorbed by those with little or no Hebrew reading skills? Such resources
would bring light to all: special education is good education.

For the physically disabled the
story is not much better. While we are generally good at building ramps, how
often is it that we have the resources available so that the blind or the
deaf can learn Torah equally with those blessed with hearing and sight? How
many synagogues have braille siddurim? How many lectures make signing
or closed captioning available? The Talmud tells us that although a blind
person does not directly benefit from light, she still makes the blessing,
"Who has created the luminaries", because she benefits indirectly -
a person with sight can see and help guide her. But have we done
this? How much do those of us with sight share the benefits of our light?
How much do we make sure that the light of the menorah is available to
all?

We are doing somewhat better in
these issues than we had in the past. Many schools are becoming more invested
in ensuring that every child receives a Jewish education, and are working at
developing special education programs, although there still is a far way to
go. I was pleasantly surprised at the recent JOFA conference that
signing was available, and that during my lecture, multiple signers were
signing at breakneck speed (I tend to talk fast).

But even the best intentioned
among us need to be reminded of this constantly. Last year, the yeshiva ran a
week long program on the Rabbi and People with Disabilities. And while
we video recorded the sessions, we did not make closed-captioning available,
nor did we have any signers present during the week itself, let alone for
other lectures and events. I sometimes feel that I speak a good game,
but have not fully internalized the sensitivity and vigilance that is required,
that will make providing such access natural and second nature.

In the opening verse of the parasha, the word tamid, constantly,
stands out. It is a word that occurs twice more in our parasha, by two other
Temple services: the offering of the daily communal sacrifices and the
burning of the incense. The message is clear: serving God requires daily
dedication and consistency. We cannot build a holy community, a place for God
to dwell among us, without daily dedication. When we first learn new halakhot,
the details and the attention they demand can overwhelm us, but then they
become second nature, they become a self-perpetuating tamid. So, too,
our daily dedication must include not just the performance of the mitzvot,
but also the lighting of the menorah, making the Torah available to
all. The details will overwhelm us at first, but if we attend to them tamid, they will become
a tamid that
becomes natural. And we will have made for ourselves a community wherein God
can truly dwell.

February
is Jewish Disability Awareness Month, and my parasha
piece below is dedicated to that theme.

I have also made
available a translation of a powerful teshuva from the Maseit Binyamin on a
blind person receiving aliyot. The author of the Maseit Binyamin was Rabbi
Benjamin Aaron Salnik, who was a student of Rema and Maharshal, and a major
Ashkenazi posek
of the 16th century. He himself had become blind, and this motivates him to
write a responsum regarding the halakhic permissibility of giving an aliyah to
a blind person.

There is a real poignancy in his
description of his own blindness and sense of being excluded, and a powerful
articulation of the halakhic mandate of inclusion. In particular, he makes the
point that excluding people not only is terribly hurtful, but it ultimately
pushes them away from religion. It is, in his terms, "casting the yoke of
mitzvot off of these people". I hope you have an opportunity to
learn this teshuva with others and I encourage you to find other ways to engage
the community around issues of disabilities during this month.